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“... on this method. It is true that the music in the movie, although by turns haunting and jarring, may seem incidental, a form of thematic accompaniment to images and story. But it is more than that. It is what the images and the story are not quite saying. Paul Julian Smith, in a subtle essay accompanying the Criterion Collection DVD of the film, reminds us ...”

“... empty nature of revenge if and when it is achieved. What do we have when we have it? They may also be telling us, although this is probably too metaphysical a thought to draw from such an untalky movie, something about the desolation of all achievements chased too long and too hard, the moment when winning a war or getting what you want seem to have ...”

“... At the end of May, Frank Schirrmacher, an editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, declared in an open letter that he had refused to serialise Martin Walser’s novel Tod eines Kritikers, or ‘Death of a Critic’, on the grounds that it was a ‘document of hatred’, a fantasy ‘execution’ of the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki ...”

“... There is no​ magic money tree,’ Theresa May said during the election campaign when confronted by a nurse complaining about low pay. Yet now that the Conservatives need the support of the DUP to give them a working majority, suddenly the magic money tree appears: £1 billion of additional spending has been promised to Northern Ireland ...”

“... vote. In the ensuing mess, all sides will claim victory, whether political, legal or moral. There may even be an attempt at a declaration of independence, though this would be more theatrical than real. The language used to describe events – ‘traitor’, ‘conquistador’, ‘coup d’état’ – has not displayed what Catalans like to think is one of ...”

“... own study suggest that, if history has lost its erstwhile meaning and focus, the cause may lie deeper than mere donnish technicality and folly. As Cannadine himself shows, Trevelyan’s highly idiosyncratic style – based on intuition illustrated with documents – was never very representative of history as practised in English university ...”

“... inviting worlds populated by exuberant eccentrics. A yawn, a laugh, an eye opening in the morning may provide enough of a glitch to set her stories in motion. Like poems, they start with irresistible first lines: ‘Not knowing what else to do, I send you walruses’; ‘This week, I am an editor of laughs’; ‘This had long been the dynamic between the two ...”

“... leadership, just drawing to a close as I write, has been a glaring signal that quitting the EU may not be the referendum’s gravest outcome. In the past three years the meaning of Brexit has shifted. First, what was supposed to be a future event with bureaucratically limited parameters became a rallying cry for a diffuse set of resentments. Now, the ...”

“... then shadow chancellor, and he wanted to be Britain’s first Asian prime minister. Amin, who may not have been so high up the kill list, was interviewed by Good Morning Britain shortly after going to Syria, and told the interviewer that leaving Gatwick had been ‘one of the happiest moments in my life’. Both young men had appeared from Syria in an ...”

“... are draped with flashing bulbs like the girls you see leaving office parties draped in tinsel. It may be that CCTV cameras need every alley to be well-lit if they are to provide the blurred images that have replaced film noir stereotypes in the iconography of villainy, but it means that one can now only imagine the wonders of the dangerous world that ...”

“... face. My mate Fergus sniggered. He said she had funny wee shoes and legs. I have a feeling she may not remember how the conversation went, but I recorded it for posterity in the back of a school jotter the next day. The Queen: ‘Very hot, isn’t it?’ Fergus: ‘Roastin’.’ The Queen: ‘And have you been cub scouts ...”

“... and their ‘barbarism’, he spoke specifically and concretely of London. He may also have been making a veiled appeal to the government not to use the attacks as an excuse to tighten even further its rules on immigration and asylum. Some hope is all I can say. Given how hard people have had to work to stop Charles Clarke’s Home Office ...”

“... badly equipped to compete with video games called things like ‘Wasp Attack IV’. Such games may be hard on the fusebox, but pale children everywhere love them, spending hours out of the sun in the clammy domain of the upstairs boxroom, where each child can become commander-in-chief of a private army of killer insects, which they happily send out in ...”

“... and usually unsatisfactory – ways out of the quandary are silence or cliché. A third way may be available, however: play a game of Scrabble, and what it means to be failed by words acquires a new complexion. Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble by Stefan Fatsis (Yellow Jersey, £15) announces ...”

“... decapitate her; for others, the amputation of fingers or toes would do. Premature Burial: How It May Be Prevented, first published in 1896 and now reissued by Hesperus Press (£9.99), is a catalogue of those unfortunates who didn’t plan so well ahead. ‘The thought of suffocation in a coffin is more terrible than that of torture on the rack, or burning at ...”